All glossary terms

Partials

Partials are the individual sine-wave components of a sound's spectrum. They include harmonics and, in sounds that contain them, inharmonic components.

An FFT of a wavetable frame reports magnitudes and phases for its frequency bins. An additive editor lets you set component levels directly. A frame of N samples has N/2 bins up to the Nyquist frequency, so shorter frames can represent fewer harmonics.